"I understand," St. George a.s.sented, "and I"ll do my best not to get thrown down. Amory has told me all he knows about it--by the way, where is the mulatto woman now?"
"Why," said Chillingworth, "some physician got interested in the case, and he"s managed to hurry her up to the Bitley Reformatory in Westchester for the present. She"s there; and that means, we need not disguise, that n.o.body can see her. Those Bitley people are like a rabble of wild eagles."
"Right," said St. George. "I"ll report at eight o"clock. Amory can board _The Aloha_ when he gets ready and take down whom he likes."
"On my life, old chap, it"s a private view of Kedar"s tents to me,"
said Amory, his eyes shining behind his pince-nez. "I"ll probably win wide disrespect by my inability to tell a mainsail from a c.o.c.kpit, but I"m a grateful dog, in spite of that."
When they were gone St. George sat by the fire. He read Amory"s story of the Boris affair in the paper, which somewhere in the apartment Rollo had unearthed, and the man took off his master"s shoes and brought his slippers and made ready his bath. St. George glanced over his shoulder at the attractively-dismantled table, with its dying candles and slanted shades.
"Gad!" he said in sheer enjoyment as he clipped the story and saw Rollo pa.s.s with the towels.
It was so absurdly like a city room"s dream of Arcady.
CHAPTER II
A Sc.r.a.p OF PAPER
To be awakened by Rollo, to be served in bed with an appetizing breakfast and to catch a hansom to the nearest elevated station were novel preparations for work in the _Sentinel_ office. The impossibility of it all delighted St. George rather more than the reality, for there is no pastime, as all the world knows, quite like that of practising the impossible. The days when, "like a man unfree," he had fared forth from his unlovely lodgings clandestinely to partake of an evil omelette, seemed enchantingly far away. It was, St. George reflected, the experience of having been released from prison, minus the disgrace.
Yet when he opened the door of the city room the odour of the printers" ink somehow fused his elation in his liberty with the elation of the return. This was like wearing fetters for bracelets.
When he had been obliged to breathe this air he had scoffed at its fascination, but now he understood. "A newspaper office," so a revered American of letters who had begun his life there had once imparted to St. George, "is a place where a man with the temperament of a savant and a recluse may bring his American vice of commercialism and worship of the uncommon, and let them have it out.
Newspapers have no other use--except the one I began on." When St.
George entered the city room, Cra.s.s, of the goblin"s blood cravats, had vacated his old place, and Provin was just uncovering his typewriter and banging the tin cover upon everything within reach, and Bennietod was writhing over a rewrite, and Chillingworth was discharging an office boy in a fashion that warmed St. George"s heart.
But Chillingworth, the city editor, was an italicized form of Chillingworth, the guest. He waved both arms at the foreman who ventured to tell him of a head that had one letter too many, and he frowned a greeting at St. George.
"Get right out on the Boris story," he said. "I depend on you. The chief is interested in this too--telephoned to know whom I had on it."
St. George knew perfectly that "the chief" was playing golf at Lenox and no doubt had read no more than the head-lines of the Holland story, for he was a close friend of the bishop"s, and St. George knew his ways; but Chillingworth"s methods always told, and St.
George turned away with all the old glow of his first a.s.signment.
St. George, calling up the Bitley Reformatory, knew that the Chances and the Fates were all allied against his seeing the mulatto woman; but he had learned that it is the one unexpected Fate and the one apostate Chance who open great good luck of any sort. So, though the journey to Westchester County was almost certain to result in refusal, he meant to be confronted by that certainty before he a.s.sumed it. To the warden on the wire St. George put his inquiry.
"What are your visitors" days up there, Mr. Jeffrey?"
"Thursdays," came the reply, and the warden"s voice suggested handcuffs by way of hospitality.
"This is St. George of the _Sentinel_. I want very much to see one of your people--a mulatto woman. Can you fix it for me?"
"Certainly not," returned the warden promptly. "The _Sentinel_ knows perfectly that newspaper men can not be admitted here."
"Ah, well now, of course," St. George conceded, "but if you have a mysterious boarder who talks Patagonian or something, and we think that perhaps we can talk with her, why then--"
"It doesn"t matter whether you can talk every language in South America," said the warden bruskly. "I"m very busy now, and--"
"See here, Mr. Jeffrey," said St. George, "is no one allowed there but relatives of the guests?"
"n.o.body,"--crisply.
"I beg your pardon, that is literal?"
"Relatives, with a permit," divulged the warden, who, if he had had a sceptre would have used it at table, he was so fond of his little power, "and the Readers" Guild."
"Ah--the Readers" Guild," said St. George. "What days, Mr. Jeffrey?"
"To-day and Sat.u.r.days, ten o"clock. I"m sorry, Mr. St. George, but I"m a very busy man and now--"
"Good-by," St. George cried triumphantly.
In half an hour he was at the Grand Central station, boarding a train for the Reformatory town. It was a little after ten o"clock when he rang the bell at the house presided over by Chillingworth"s "rabble of wild eagles."
The Reformatory, a boastful, brick building set in grounds that seemed freshly starched and ironed, had a discoloured door that would have frowned and threatened of its own accord, even without the printed warnings pasted to its panels stating that no application for admission, with or without permits, would be honoured upon any day save Thursday. This was Tuesday.
Presently, the chains having fallen within after a feudal rattling, an old man who looked born to the business of snapping up a drawbridge in lieu of a taste for any other exclusiveness peered at St. George through absurd smoked gla.s.ses, cracked quite across so that his eyes resembled buckles.
"Good morning," said St. George; "has the Readers" Guild arrived yet?"
The old man grated out an a.s.sent and swung open the door, which creaked in the pitch of his voice. The bare hall was cut by a wall of steel bars whose gate was padlocked, and outside this wall the door to the warden"s office stood open. St. George saw that a meeting was in progress there, and the sight disturbed him. Then the click of a key caught his attention, and he turned to find the old man quietly and surprisingly swinging open the door of steel bars.
"This way, sir," he said hoa.r.s.ely, fixing St. George with his buckle eyes, and shambled through the door after him locking it behind them.
If St. George had found awaiting him a gold throne encircled by kneeling elephants he could have been no more amazed. Not a word had been said about the purpose of his visit, and not a word to the warden; there was simply this miraculous opening of the barred door.
St. George breathlessly footed across the rotunda and down the dim opposite hall. There was a mistake, that was evident; but for the moment St. George was going to propose no reform. Their steps echoed in the empty corridor that extended the entire length of the great building in an odour of unspeakable soap and superior disinfectants; and it was not until they reached a stair at the far end that the old man halted.
"Top o" the steps," he hoa.r.s.ely volunteered, blinking his little buckle eyes, "first door to the left. My back"s bad. I won"t go up."
St. George, inhumanely blessing the circ.u.mstance, slipped something in the old man"s hand and sprang up the stairs.
The first door at the left stood ajar. St. George looked in and saw a circle of bonnets and white curls clouded around the edge of the room, like witnesses. The Readers" Guild was about leaving; almost in the same instant, with that soft lift and touch which makes a woman"s gown seem sewed with vowels and sibilants, they all arose and came tapping across the bare floor. At their head marched a woman with such a bright bonnet, and such a tinkle of ornaments on her gown that at first sight she quite looked like a lamp. It was she whom St. George approached.
"I beg your pardon, madame," he said, "is this the Readers" Guild?"
There was nothing in St. George"s grave face and deferential stooping of shoulders to betray how his heart was beating or what a bound it gave at her amazing reply.
"Ah," she said, "how do you do?"--and her manner had that violent absent-mindedness which almost always proves that its possessor has trained a large family of children--"I am so glad that you can be with us to-day. I am Mrs. Manners--forgive me," she besought with perfectly self-possessed distractedness, "I"m afraid that I"ve forgotten your name."
"My name is St. George," he answered as well as he could for virtual speechlessness.
The other members of the Guild were issuing from the room, and Mrs.
Manners turned. She had a fashion of smiling enchantingly, as if to compensate her total lack of attention.
"Ladies," she said, "this is Mr. St. George, at last."
Then she went through their names to him, and St. George bowed and caught at the flying end of the name of the woman nearest him, and muttered to them all. The one nearest was a Miss Bella Bliss Utter, a little brown nut of a woman with bead eyes.